Hairspray!

What sort of a weird cultural world are we living in where a movie becomes a musical and then becomes a movie version of that musical? Well, this world, of course.

I got to see 20 minutes of footage of the movie Hairspray today, at a special screening for potential distributors, media types, and socially active gay men right here in Toronto. The director, Adam Shankman, introduced the "Frankenmovie" as he put it - 20 minutes strung together - but I think I really got a taste for what this film will be like. It was fun, funny, packed with music, and features the single weirdest thing that John Travolta has ever done - and that includes Battlefield Earth. Travolta plays Edna Turnblad - he's the mother of the movie's lead - and no, you do not need to re-read that last sentence.

I am not totally certain what Travolta is doing here - he's not playing a man in drag, he's playing a woman, and a large one at that. It's a strange thing to see - surrounded by all sorts of stars who are playing their roles in a far more conventional fashion, he really stands out. Queen Latifah plays a sassy singing matriarch; James Marsden is a toothy pretty-boy; and Zac Efron is a teen dream. These are all like Evil Knievel versus the Axis of Evil - they're no-brainers.

But Travolta is a...housewife/laundress with a massive appetite? I guess one out of three isn't bad. Still, the movie does contain the line "I'd make every day Negro Day!" and I think that's worth the price of admission alone. In a very crowded summer, full of special-effects laden sequels, this one may end up being this year's The Devil Wears Prada: a campy, funny, adult alternative to all the special effect-laden sequels that are out there.

Facebook equals Crack Cocaine. But much, much worse.

You've all heard about Facebook, the latest and greatest social networking site. You may not know how incredibly popular it is in Canada - more so than anywhere else in the world, actually, even though it started in the US and was unavailable to a lot of Canadian schools (school networks being the only way to join Facebook until last fall). What is it about Facebook in particular that seems to be resonating so strongly with Canadians? My guess is that we like community building tools more than others and that we appreciate the relative Spartan-ness of it as well: it's very simple to connect to and keep up to date with everyone in your network using Facebook, more so than with any other social networking site.

All that being said, we're now using it at Youthography for everything from our own group, to housing a promotion we're doing called Rockstar Hotel, to our own personal pages.

Whether or not it lasts remains to be seen: after all, it wasn't too long ago that Friendster was occupying the same space for many of us, and it's simply not as popular with young Canadians as it once was. We've been speaking forever - or, at least, for a few years, about the blurring between our off-and-0n-line lives, about the increasing connection between personal lives and work, and about the breaking down of barriers that used to keep different parts of our lives separate from each other. Facebook is just the next step forward: a single place, online, that lets you connect to all of the things that matter to you.

For Youthography's official perspective, check out our latest newsletter. The numbers are amazing. And it's only a matter of time before someone makes the owners of this thing an offer they can't refuse: as it stands, there are rumours that it's bringing in $50 million a month in revenue right now (through sponsored groups and other forms of marketing) and that they have already refused an offer for three quarters of a billion dollars. Which may be the most amazing number of them all.